Star Wars: The Old Republic announces Onslaught expansion arriving in September

As announced at this weekend’s SWTOR Chicago Celebration Cantina, the game’s next expansion is titled Onslaught and will launch in September free to subscribers, complete with a new playable species (Nautolans), a new level cap, and a new focus on the war between the Republic and the Empire. It’s a new break from the past few expansions, starting when Darth Malgus invades Corellia and kicks off new challenges for players.

Patron and friend of Massively OP Eliot W. (not to be confused with the author of this piece) was on hand in Chicago and fed us copious notes and slides from the live presentation tonight, which we’ve combined into this article!

The story will take players to the planet of Onderon and the hollowed-out smuggler hub of Mek-sha as players throw their weight behind one faction or the other, complete with a new operation on Dxun (the largest moon of Onderon) and a new flashpoint on Corellia itself. Players will also be exploring new ways of getting gear, non-combat items and sets, and a new gear slot, Tactical, which should provide new ways of customizing abilities along with itemization changes. There’s a definite emphasis on getting gear the way you like and through the play you find fun via horizontal progression.

During the presentation, BioWare devs admitted that Galactic Starfighter has been neglected and apologized in particular for the alt-unfriendly/legacy-unfriendly itemization system, so expect more changes along those lines. It even sounds as if there’s going to be new character screen music – you can check out a teaser below.

Unfortunately for BW, MMO players when they move on tend to flock to other MMOs. I have been in ESPOfor 2.5 years now since I left SWTOR. ESOs content cadence is so good, I see no reason to leave for an MMO that has done so little in content over the last 2.5 years.

Furthermore, it still doesn’t appear they understand the real issues with gearing. GC was a complete and utter disaster. They were thoroughly warned about the negative effect it would have if it went live and they did it anyway – and it had the effect they were warned about.

SWTORs big problem is CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT. What you call a “massive expansion” is about 50% of what comes in an ESO Chapter and close to on par for what they do as a standard mini-zone DLC drop.

If the goal of SWTOR is to win back and grow their player base, I think they need to do two things over the next year before that happens:

1.) Fix the gearing and just plain dump GC. Gearing worked with 4.0 and was completely destroyed with 5.0. Now, with 6.0, it appears all they are going to do is further band-aid a system that at it’s core is already the biggest junk design ever put in an MMO. A new color lipstick on a pig still means it is a pig. Let’s be honest here, there is no reason for a level cap increase except to do the same thing they have been doing since 3.0 – resetting the gear grind on existing content.

2.) Do a full year of “meaningful” content updates – one released every quarter. Prove that things are changed and that content, content, content is going to be the path forward. Not just changing resetting the gear grind, yet again, and updating all the existing content for this new gear grind.

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4 months ago

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Greaterdivinity

Uh…subscription only access? No F2P access to the expansion at all?

Please say I’m off on this…

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4 months ago

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Louie

This is a late reply so I hope you see it, but you are off on it. It works the same as every other expac where you need to sub once to unlock it.

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4 months ago

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Greaterdivinity

Is this confirmed somewhere? Because the wording on the slide made it seem like a sub was required to maintain access. And given some of SWTOR’s less friendly monetization practices I’m not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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4 months ago

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butterpanda888

I’ve been wanting playable nautolans in this game for so long! Since I return to this game around twice per year (summers when my brother comes to visit, and holiday season), the new movie is coming out and the trailer has me excited, and as I said earlier, Nautolans, I will most likely be redownloading this game sometime soon, and checking out that expansion/update when it goes live.

But first: NAUTOLANS!!!

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5 months ago

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J

-Goes full old person mode- When I was your age we called these content updates!

(this ain’t no expansion)

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5 months ago

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Malcolm Swoboda

-Goes older person mode- (though I’m likely younger) Actually, any update to content and systems would be called an expansion, with paid bundled expansions being called an ‘expansion pack’. Later, these expansions were called ‘content updates/patches’ as the Internet grew, and expansion packs became simply expansions.

This update is enough for me to call it an expansion, but EA seems to realize enough that this size of update isn’t good enough to sell for $40+, especially on top of any subscription.

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4 months ago

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Jim Bergevin Jr

Considering I still have to remain unsubbed to get anywhere close to reducing the speed leveling gains, and there is still a reliance on the 4.0 and 5.0 expansions (even if for default choices) I will be giving this a firm pass.

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5 months ago

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NeoWolf

On one hand I hope it’s good, the game needs the win frankly.

But on the other time and experience with them over the last few years has taught me to put my expectations low… my faith in the remaining developers whose specialty is NOT pve is not good.

I will however give them the benefit of the doubt once more and wait and see what it is like.. but they are not really in a position to disappoint anymore we are literally down to nails in coffins time on this games future.

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5 months ago

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Witches

Looking forward to the Kit Fisto Nautolan Explosion in September.

Hopefully this goes well and they settle on this model for the future, one expansion with all the stuff for every group, and another update for each type of content during the year.

Honestly i wouldn’t even mind paying for this, and being free for subs will probably mean getting some stuff from the CM just to show support, really hoping this is the new normal.

And launching in September means the bugs will be fixed by Xmas time when they take their break.

Looking great on paper (pixels), let’s see how it works out.

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5 months ago

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Malcolm Swoboda

“Hopefully this goes well and they settle on this model for the future, one expansion with all the stuff for every group, and another update for each type of content during the year.”

This would be best, to me.

Though include one patch (whether separate or stuff included in another) that attempts something new as a system. For example recently, guild heraldry.

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4 months ago

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Anstalt

I’m extremely curious about your use of the term “horizontal progression”.

Do you mean that progression in this new expansion will be horizontal? i.e. players will not gain any more power but will instead gain more customisation/specialisations? That is horizontal progression – overall power stays the same but the way you use that power can be changed.

Or do you simply mean that players will have multiple routes for obtaining new gear, but that progression will still be vertical i.e. player power will increase?

Given that SWTOR has always been based around quite extreme vertical progression I would be very surprised to see them reverse that trend! Especially given that Bioware is incompentant when it comes to online games and EA is so risk adverse, making this sort of change just doesn’t seem possible. So, I’d love a clarification!

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5 months ago

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Jim Bergevin Jr

Considering we’re seeing yet another level increase with this expansion, I’m figuring we are still very vertical with the progression system.

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5 months ago

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rufty

I’m left wondering if this renewed interest by the Devs in the game has something to do with the rumoured Old Republic era TV series by the makers of GoT on Disney+? Anyway happy this game is getting a new expansion. :-D

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5 months ago

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bobfish

I suspect they probably just got back the devs that were commandeered for Andromeda and Anthem. But as the team is also handling Anthem’s continuing development I wouldn’t expect too much from them.

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5 months ago

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rafael12104

Interesting. So, it looks like SWTOR is going back to the old tried and true content
model. This xpac is more like Shadow of Revan or Rise of the Hutt Cartel than everything that came after that.

And a new Operation too? Heh. They learned their lesson there too by ensuring an Op is included.

Well done. But… wow. It sure did take a lot of unnecessary toil to remember the formula that once worked so well.